8. Who Makes You Smile
My morning felt lonely and quiet after everything that went on last night, the sun shone in and broke across my floor like a bunch of rusty nails, begging me to step onto their comfortable warmth. This ranch was my home and sanctuary, but now it felt more like a prison. I just felt so awful about everything that happened: trying my chances with those guys to see if it stirred up anything in me that might make me feel normal again, sending Rainbow off so coldly. I squeezed my blankets again, feeling the extensive rolls of fabric that could not be filled by just one person.
Despite my will to stay in bed until the sun went back down again, I managed to pull myself up and get dressed for work. The apples, cows, horses and chores did not care much about my personal life, they never gave me a break if I had a dilemma or trouble. That was just the nature of it. I grabbed my hat last and pulled it over my hair, opening my door and moseying down the stairs. I came into the dining room, leaning over and kissing my little sister on the top of her head.
"Howdy Apple Bloom," I greeted her as I did it, walking around her in her usual seat to go to the kitchen and grab myself some oatmeal or cereal. "You're up early."
"Nah, sis." She laughed a bit as I scooped up a bowl and found some granola to stuff it with. "Yer up late. I thought you'd be helpin' Big Mac with collectin' the eggs."
"What?" I leaned back and looked out the window, measuring the height of the sun above the ranch. She was right after all, usually I got up around dawn, but it was quite a bit later than that. "I guess I had a rough night, didn't get to sleep 'til late."
"Yea', I remember," she replied as she picked up her bowl and carried it into the kitchen behind me, pushing it up onto the counter that was still a little too tall for her to reach properly. "That ain't much of a breakfast," she commented on my little bowl of granola.
"I just ain't that hungry, I guess." I looked down at it too, and even I knew it was strange. This was not the kind of breakfast that would keep me energized out in the sun, but I didn't feel much like eating.
"Yer usually stuffin' yer face at breakfast," her voice squeaked a bit with surprise, and I just chuckled as I shook my head and opened the fridge. "You sure yer all right, sis?"
"There." I grabbed a hard-boiled egg from the second shelf and bit the skinny end of it, leaving it there half in my mouth as I murmured against the cold exterior, "Y'happy now?"
"You're so weird, Applejack!" She giggled loudly and started pushing me into the dining room, seeing as how we weren't ever supposed to eat in the kitchen if Granny had anything to say about it.
I kept on laughing as I came to the table, which was still set up long for when we had guests over. I knew my way to my seat as well as I knew my own two feet, but looking at it made me feel awful lonely. I sat down as Apple Bloom went back to wash her dish, and my eyes drifted to the seat that Rainbow Dash had taken when she sat with us. I shoved several spoonfuls of granola in my mouth at once before chewing, hoping it would shake out the thought of her sitting there, the idea of her kicking me under the table; as if it had been her doing at all. I darn near swallowed the hard-boiled egg whole just to get up out of my seat again and leave that table, it just wasn't good for me to be lingering on stuff like that.
Thinking of no better way to get some distance from the ranch than this, I found myself out picking apples in the orchard again. Granny still hadn't finished with the last batch the bunch of us brought her, but it was some honest work I felt I needed to be doing. Even though the sun was shining hot as usual, the apples were cool to the touch and tasted as fresh as if I had pulled them out of a flowing stream, still sometimes saturated with morning dew.
I had two baskets with me on my own, each one big and heavy as a barrel, though that might be stretching the truth a mite. With all the weight already on my shoulders, these apples felt like stones to carry. I hadn't noticed the day drag on, but while I was up on a ladder grabbing another load of apples and inspecting them for quality, I heard the grinding of wheels on gravel. Now that was an odd sound to hear out here so vividly, usually it was only pick ups or little cars that came down this road, but this vehicle was loud and heavy. It must have been their bus ride home.
Though I tried to hold myself still with resolve, I jumped off the ladder as I heard it round the bend, and found myself almost chasing the noise and abandoning the buckets of apples as they lay. Despite my better judgement and the screaming in my head that told me I was a fool, I raced down the hill as the orange vehicle pulled up and drove into the drive way, feeling my breath catch in my throat and the long grass snap at my legs.
I don't know why I ran, maybe I just didn't want to miss the chance to say goodbye, or wanted to be a good host, either way I found myself at the ranch lickety-split, trying to calm my breath so I did not give away my earnestness. By the time I got down there they were just finishing up packing the bags into the storage compartment, and the lot of them were still hanging around outside the bus. I breathlessly walked up to Big Mac, who was helping the driver stuff their bags back into the undercarriage.
"So, they're leavin'?" I tiredly asked him as if it wasn't obvious.
"Eeyup," he simply replied as he hoisted a big old sack into the bus, before closing it up and letting the driver lock it up tight.
"All right, everyone on the bus!" their coach called and blew a whistle to get their attention, though I thought it was a little excessive. I crossed my arms as I watched them board, acting like it didn't bother me in the slightest, even though my heart still raced.
"Hey," her voice broke me out of my façade, and I looked up to see her standing a few feet before me, making the same awkward, angry expression. "I didn't think you'd... I don't know, make it."
I knew what she really meant by that, but didn't address it. Instead, I played coy, "O'course, I gotta be a good host."
"Right, right," she repeated with a few solemn nods. She cleared her throat anxiously as she kicked at the gravel, but found some more vocabulary, "So, like, goodbye or whatever."
"Yeah," I replied simply, but noticed that she put her hand out to me for a shake.
I looked into her eyes one last time, finding them staring straight back at me with not only that aggressive attitude, but with some hidden sorrow buried real deep. I took her offer with minimal hesitation, as showing my nervousness might have told everyone of my own hidden worries. We shook three times, our hands locking closed firmly in this perfect last embrace. I felt numb besides that touch, her hand so nice and cosy warm like it made everything else disappear. She pulled away first, and stepped back to get on the bus after her last team mate.
"G'bye," I said, and it even sounded weak to me.
"Thanks again," Twilight's voice seemed distant to me as I watched Rainbow get on the bus and sit down near the front, on this side of the bus like she wanted to let me see her until she left. I shook it off and looked at Twilight, smiling like I was just as carefree as ever. "I know that the team sure benefited from this experience, myself included. And maybe one or two of us even found out something about ourselves." She looked at me with this simple smile, but it did not quite seem so simple as that. There was no way Rainbow would have told her what had gone on, she was too proud for that, but then what was she implying? "Anyway, I suppose we should get on the road. Hope everything goes well for you all!"
"Have a safe trip," Granny Smith chattered out with a wave of her hand. "Y'all come back now, y'hear?"
I could not look away that time, when there was a pane of glass between us, and if the bus wheels rolled fast enough, the rest of the world. She looked out at me too, with a neutral kind of expression, though I could feel some suppressed hurt. As the vehicle started up and groaned awake, I watcher her give me some tiny remnant of a wave, a lazy half-salute if you asked me. I raised my own hand up to my head level and waved it gently back and forth as they pulled away. I stepped forward without conscious consent as the bus turned away, seeing just one more second of her bright, rainbow-coloured hair before the glass reflected the sun into my eyes instead.
I stood there still, with my one hand up like an idiot, until I couldn't even hear the muffler coughing up the dirt road. That overwhelming sadness was new to me, that pull at my chest and that miserable melancholy I had only read about when I myself was so far from my farm, and never even when I was so far away did I understand it the way I did now. I let my hand come down and contorted my face a bit, questioning just what all that mushy gunk actually meant.
"I guess I should get started on all them apples you brought by," Granny Smith said to me as she started towards the ranch. "Got plenty a' sauce and jam and pies to make. Applejack, you comin'?"
"Yea' Granny, I got two more barrels for ya." I paused, remembering that I had left them way out back where they'd do no one any good. "... Back in the orchard," I admitted with a sheepish grin.
"Well what the hay are they doin' out there?" she asked me in that curmudgeon old tone. "Somethin' on your mind got you slackin' off, Applejack?"
"Nah, Granny, it ain't nothin' but a little negligence, been so busy and all." I tried to find myself a good enough excuse, but I knew that hardly a word of it seemed to be truthful enough.
"If that's all." Granny kept on walking, like she couldn't tell if something was wrong. Or maybe she could, and she knew that leaving it up to me was the best course of action to take, because whatever she did seemed to get me thinking. I smiled at the dirt, feeling myself losing what grip on sanity I seemed to have left.
"Well," my mouth moved without my consent, and by the time I figured it out I was still going, "I was just wondrin', you have any idea where all those folks were from again, Granny?"
"Oh, I don't know. It must say somewhere on the reservation sheet in the office. Why?" She waved the subject off as though it had little importance, carrying on like she was none the wiser.
"I just need to know." My legs carried themselves in that direction, though I tried to call out to Granny about how little it seemed to mean. "I'll be right back, okay?" I finally said over my shoulder as I came up to the office: this little wooden shed next to the ranch house close to the drive way where there was a phone, a fax, a window and some pens and paper.
I rifled around erratically for a while, feeling my time running right out before me like a chicken on the road. Course, then I realised that we had them filed away chronologically for any situation like this—well, maybe not exactly like this—and promptly knocked open the stubborn, sticky drawer. Pulling out the most recent file, I frantically searched all possible headings for something to tell me where they came from, but all I could come up with was a city name: Ponyville. I knew the place of course, but it was mighty far away and quite sizeable, so it didn't really mean squat.
I scanned once or twice more, hoping I just wasn't looking hard enough, but nothing more came up. Slamming the file on the file cabinet, I picked up my hat off my head and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to take a calming breath instead of lashing out. I struggled to remember if Rainbow had said anything about where they were from. I mean, it didn't matter to me or nothing, but I deserved to know, right?
"Hey, A.J.," I heard Big Mac's voice as he leaned in through the open window of the office, looking down at me kneeling over the files in the shadows like I must have been crazy. "You find what you were looking for?"
"No." I frowned at the words scrawled across the pages and the file folders; the labels and the titles all meant nothing to me.
All I really knew was the name of the city, and that didn't quite seem like enough. I got up to my feet though, leaving that transient bull spit on the floor where it belonged. I felt it then, that fervent rush, that pull, that determination I must have seen in her eyes a hundred times.
"Not yet." I reached up to the office wall, plucking the old pick-up keys off the protruding nail in the wall, where we always kept it. "Don't wait up for me, Mac."
"What do you mean?" he asked me, but I expertly slipped passed him and raced towards the truck, feeling the keys around between my fingers like they worked to turn my own ignition. "Applejack?!"
"I can't really explain it Big Mac," I called back with a grin, turning around in my sprint and nearly tripping over my rushed backwards footsteps, the slightly raised heels of my boots catching in the gravel. "She just makes me feel like smilin'!"
I heard myself laughing about it: about how sneaky I had been with my family, about how wrong I had been to stay behind, about how blind I had been to my own darn feelings, about everything. Big Mac had been right. If someone makes you feel like smiling, makes your heart swell up so much you think it just might burst, well, that's someone you'd better chase. No matter who they are.
I jumped into the truck, putting my keys into the ignition before I had even closed the door all the way. I turned the key and felt the truck howl with ambition, shaking with anticipation for the ride just as I was. I reversed out of the driveway and pulled onto the street in a single motion, letting the dust kick up over where that bus had once pulled up and taken her away from me. I leaned out the window at my family, who all came up to the end of the driveway to wave me off whether they agreed with my unspoken decision or not. I expected Big Mac would have a heck of a time trying to explain my absence to Apple Bloom, but Granny would probably forget I left just as quickly as she forgot I was there.
They had quite the head start on me, but at the speed I was going I was sure to catch up with them. That's what I thought as first, anyway, but as I kept on I found that this one horse road was long and deceptive, the dust kicked up leaving me no way to see far enough ahead that I might make out a vehicle in the distance. The day dragged on and on though my foot was hard against the pedal, each moment passing stole away what resolve I thought I had found until I reached the nearest town, and all the various roads meant there was no way for me to follow the dead trail. I swerved off the road and pulled into a shallow ditch, leaning my forehead against the steering wheel like it could direct me any better than my dirty, ranch hands.
I sighed, smelling the oil and gasoline from the truck above the scent of dirt and dust that covered our roads. If this was all it took to stop me, I don't know why I went after her at all. I fingered around in my pockets, searching for the old black cell phone I never really needed to use until then. I had picked it up about a year ago so I could call Granny from anywhere, in case something happened to her while I was at school, and only now did I see its true worth. I opened it up and waited impatiently as it turned on, giving me all those stupid greeting messages as it did. Closing my eyes, I wondered just what it was I thought this stupid thing could help me with.
The most I knew about them was the city they were in, and some first names. I tried to remember the license plate on the bus, but nothing came in clear, the only thing I could have seen from beside it was the school district number. My eyes snapped open at the idea as that school district number came to me, and I remembered it well enough to recite. Finally the cell phone sounded off and came to the home screen, and though I knew so little of this technology stuff, I found a way to call an operator.
"Yes, hello?" I spoke loudly into it, trying to figure out the volume they might hear me at. I heard something of a response, but didn't care to listen or remember the words. "I'm lookin' for the school board of district 13. Any way I can get a hold of them?"
"I'll put you through," was such an easy response I could not help but let my hopes rise and my face lift into a smile. I heard the phone ring and ring three times before someone bothered to pick up.
"Hello, Ponyville school district 13 main office, how can I help you?" the female voice on the other end described, and I could hardly wait for her to finish before I started asking her for help.
"Yes, yes, I'm lookin' for a high school, a buncha their kids came out to a ranch over spring break, and one of them..." I paused without a good reason enough to call, except maybe the honest truth as best as I could put it, "Well, she forgot somethin' behind. Any who, you can tell me how to reach them?"
"I'm sorry, but we don't have access to that kind of information at reception, and certainly can't give it away if we did." I wanted to throw the phone out the window as she told me that, but settled for just clenching my fist up and smacking the armrest. I sighed, moving my hat off my eyes so the sweat would not bother me so much. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"Uh, wait, let me just..." I racked my brain to come up with another angle, something, anything that might generate a response. I tried to go over what Rainbow had told me about their team, and what I must have figured out on my own. I spoke up suddenly, "Okay, yeah. I know they had a senior soccer game scheduled for tomorrow. Can you give me that? Where the game is taking place, even?"
"There are three games scheduled for that evening. I'll need something more," she explained, and I felt like I could just get nowhere with this woman. I needed something more specific, something that was unique to their team. That was easy, actually. Heck, I knew that one better than anyone, I'd wager.
"Okay, okay." I smiled against the warm metal of the phone, as my mouth made the words my brain was eager to express, "The team's been losing lately, this is their last chance at the city championships. And this team, they've got a girl on it, y'hear? There's only one girl on their team, and she's this—this rainbow-headed fire cracker, hot-tempered and all, but an ace player. You know who I'm talking about?"
I spoke with such reverence it shocked me that I had not noticed my own desires sooner, but now I was down to asking some stranger over the phone for information I should have just grown the gall to ask from her myself. There was this pause over the line, and I thought for a second that she had hung up, but her voice returned.
"A rainbow-headed girl, you said?" My own hopeful grin melted across my face as the sun climbed in through the wind shield like a Northern star, guiding me to her.